Saturday, August 07, 2010

Laser weapon kills 4 UAVs

A Raytheon-U.S. Navy team used a high power, solid-state laser combined with a Phalanx Close-in Weapon System to shoot down four Unmanned Ariel Vehicles off San Nicolas Island near California. Powered by electricity, the system offers an affordable and almost infinite magazine to stop incoming threats. Once development is completed, the Laser Area Weapon System will give the warfighter a speed-of-light solution for defeating rockets, mortars, UAVs and other targets.

Raytheon intends to be a major player in the U.S. Army’s Common Infrared Countermeasures competition. Raytheon Missile Systems has developed a CIRCM solution, known as Scorpion that will feature the company’s production-matured directed infrared countermeasures turret and a rugged quantum cascade laser (QCL). Scorpion will be a light-weight, low-cost, highly reliable, laser-based infrared countermeasures solution against current and future IR guided threat missiles.

More at ZDNet.

Source: Eamo / ZDNet / Raytheon

3 comments:

sith master said...

Excellent; soon our capacity to create weapons will only be limited by our skill with acronyms.

Civilian Overseer said...

Sithy another limiting factor will be our ability to build moon sized space stations to house those abbreviated weapons in.

Major General Creedon said...

The time is closer than you think gentlemen. *Rubs hands together*